BLINK TWICE (2024)
When a billionaire meets a waitress at his fundraising gala, he invites her to join him and his friends on a vacation on his private island, but there's something terrifying hiding beneath the facade.
Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut, Blink Twice, addresses what would happen if the characters from Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023) found themselves in a Jordan Peele horror movie.
Frida (Naomi Ackie) and her roommate Jess (Alia Shawkat) are catering waitresses struggling to make a living in an apartment with black mould. At work, the duo encounters tech bro Slater King (Channing Tatum), and Frida is smitten. Slater chose a more peaceful and honest life working on his charities and living on his island after being cancelled for an unspecified scandal. The next thing they know, the two girls join Slater and his famous friends in his private haven, where phones are confiscated.
The girls are whisked away on a private jet with a group of his friends, Cody (Simon Rex), Tom (Haley Joel Osment), Vic (Christian Slater), and Lucas (Levon Hawke). All of these characters lack the depth of Slater King, stereotypes of men who wasted their youth and potential and are now trying to suck it from gorgeous young women. It’s never specified what they do for a living or how they know Slater, just that one likes cooking; one is on TV because his sitcom was cancelled, and one lost his pinky finger in a story no one talks about. Slater is a standout in this rat pack of the worst men one could ever know, a sardonic drinker who always has a dry response to any situation.
When Frida arrives, she’s met coldly by Sarah (Adria Arjona), a former contestant on Survivor who already has eyes on Slater. She’s joined by Camilla (Liz Caribel) and Heather (Trew Mullen) alongside Slater’s frazzled assistant (an underused Geena Davis). The young women are all dressed in pre-set white outfits, making them look like the wives in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)—one of whom was played by Kravitz herself.
At first, it’s perfect, if not a little self-contained. The group all lounge by the pool, eating the finest food, taking a copious number of drugs, and frolicking across the lawn of Slater’s mansion. The second act mostly repeats the same evening of assigned fun again and again. In the background of these scenes, which look like Greek and Roman art, is a foreboding threat.
But the long days of drinking champagne in the pool, which turn into debauched nights of drug-taking, start to make Frida weary. While Frida tells everyone she is having a good time, she realises that perhaps she isn’t. The audience is always frustratingly three steps ahead of Frida, always waiting for her to catch up to the writing.
Kravitz’s debut looks good, opulent, and crisp. Despite the gorgeous shots of the women frolicking in their white gowns, which replicate the dreamy imagery of Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides), the writer-director never forgets to remind audiences that ‘Something Is Up’. From the snakes in the grass to the staff’s weariness at the men, the clues and analogies are a little too obvious.
The big reveal in Blink Twice’s third act sadly doesn’t deliver the shock it wants to. The breadcrumb trail is obvious, and the writing shows its cards a little early. The film greatly improves when the cards are all laid on the table and the island’s true nature is revealed.
Blink Twice is a film with much to say, yet seems to say both too much and too little. While it effectively employs horror tropes and atmosphere-building to make its point, it does so too late. The numerous breadcrumbs scattered throughout ensure that the grand reveal comes as no surprise to anyone. Until the twist is unveiled, Blink Twice languishes in a purgatory where audiences anticipate a revelation and its likely nature, merely waiting for Frida to catch up with their understanding.
What is truly shocking is the confrontational nature of the writing in the final act. Blink Twice doesn’t shy away from graphically depicting scenes that other films in the genre would merely hint at. The film seeks to portray the dangers of men in power, their control over others, and the way women are forced to perform for them. Regrettably, these themes are merely touched upon in the final act.
Naomi Ackie (Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody) delivers a spellbinding performance as Frida, a woman desperately seeking validation from her celebrity crush. The ever-talented Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development) is relegated to the sidelines as Jess, who is sadly underwritten as a woman whose only defining characteristic is her excessive smoking. Adria Arjona (Hit Man) comes into her own in the final act, embodying female rage and a refusal to conform to societal expectations for women.
Channing Tatum’s performance as Slater King is somewhat understated. While he uses the role to demonstrate his versatility beyond his former dancer days and the near-miss of playing Gambit in the X-Men franchise, there was more to be extracted from this character. His final monologue feels slightly stilted and smug, failing to fully drive home the message. Tatum is a great charmer, but the layered villainy of a man like Slater may be slightly beyond his skillset to truly nail.
Kravitz and her co-writer, E.T Feigenbaum, have created a leading man in Slater King, but only because celebrity culture is filled with men abusing their good looks, bank balance, and power for sex and attention. The rest of his posse and the female characters feel like generic avatars of the type of people who surround these men. For a narrative about women finding their feet without the power of men, the women feel strangely one-dimensional.
Blink Twice feels equally like a shockingly bold exploration of predatory men and performative femininity and a surface-level #MeToo yarn. It could have pushed the subject so much more, delivering the blows in the second act rather than waiting for a third-act reveal. Despite its pacing issues and premature reveals, Zoë Kravitz has proven herself to be far more than an actor dabbling in director; but a promising filmmaker with something to say about womanhood.
MEXICO • USA | 2024 | 102 MINUTES | 2.39:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH
Cast & Crew
director: Zoë Kravitz.
writers: Zoë Kravitz & E.T Feigenbaum.
starring: Naomi Ackie, Channing Tatum, Christian Slater, Simon Rex, Adria Arjona, Kyle MacLachlan, Haley Joel Osment, Geena Davis & Alia Shawkat.
